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Thursday, February 16, 2012

FotoFeb: Day 16

Stairway to Tattoo

I've been talking about getting a new tattoo for ages. Yonks. Forever. A really, really long time. And over the past couple of months I'd gradually formed in my mind what I wanted - a twin pair of tattoos reflecting my New Zealand and Australian heritage. I decided on a stylised, All Blacks-style silver fern for the NZ one, but couldn't settle on anything equivalent for the Oz one. I tossed around a few different ideas but got stuck, until the always-fabulous Kath suggested gum leaves and I realised it was exactly what I wanted. I tossed out the All Blacks silver fern and settled on a still fairly stylised but slightly more realistic koru and fern leaf for the NZ tattoo, and gum leaves, nuts, and flowers for the Oz one. Then I booked a consultation with Victoria at Wild at Heart (also on Kath's recommendation) to settle on the basic design, size, placement, and price.

So today I got an early mark from work, and Dave and I trained up to Brisbane for the evening. I met Victoria, who distilled the essence of what I wanted from my vague description and a few photos into a pair of little sketches in about 30 seconds. So I'll be getting a pair of simple, sketch-style tattoos on my inside wrists. She said it would be better and cheaper if we did both tattoos at the same time, and would only take 1-1.5 hours total, and that way it would be easier to get them to be a matched set, and I readily agreed! So on the 7th of March (the day we get back from our long weekend at Byron Bay for our wedding anniversary) we are making another trek up to Brisbane for me to get inked. I am super-excited and so happy its finally happening! It's been years since I got tattooed and I'm really looking forward to it.

After my tattoo consult we met up with Kath and had a pub dinner in the city which was delicious, then we had the long train journey back home. It's been a long, busy, exciting day and now I'm happy and sleepy and feeling very content!